Originally Posted by
aztimm
My ~2012 MacBook Air finally bit the dust. Last Monday I was using it, and the screen was flickering. Then suddenly I smelled something burning, and the screen stopped working. Took it to an Apple Store, and they did diagnostics on it...essentially they can't really do anything to fix it, but I can take it to a 3rd party shop. They charge $85 plus anything to actually fix (if it is a blown circuit it might be as little as $30, but for a new motherboard would be $$$).
Anyway, I'm looking at the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, and can't really tell what the difference is, other than the ~$200 more for the Pro. Costco currently has them on sale (through Friday, but this seems to recur rather often),
Air for $1049 and
Pro for $1249. These are both 13.3" screens, about the same as my old machine.
Out of the two, which would you get, and why?
I might still take the old machine to the shop and see what is wrong with it. If it is something cheap, I can get it fixed and have it as a spare. I'm really impressed that it lasted about 10 years.
If you want to get the 2012 Air fixed, Rossmann Repair Group in NYC will do it. It will probably cost around $100 plus however much it costs to mail it to them. These old machines are very repairable. I still have a 2012 MacBook Pro as a secondary machine to run old abandoned 16 and 32 bit apps that the current day 64 bit machines will not run.
If you're set on getting a new MacBook, the Air and Pro are similar in specs, but the Air does not have a cooling fan, and will run hotter, and will thermal throttle when it gets too hot. The Pro has a cooling fan. Personally, I would get the Pro.
If you want to recover any data off your old MacBook Air, Other World Computing (MacSales) sells an enclosure for the SSD that you can plug into your new Mac to keep using it as an external drive if you'd like.